Coffee Crashes
by TheBookRider
Summary: Sleep-deprived and under deadlines, Annabeth Chase is less than thrilled when she crashes into a blue-eyed boy at the coffee store.


**Coffee Crashes**

Annabeth Chase would have been declared dead by a mortician and shipped off to the mortuary without a second thought. Not only did she have an essay due the next day, but she also had a complete architectural plan to revise for her internship. The assignments would have normally been done on time, but her best friend Piper McLean had convinced her to go to a late movie.

That ended up being a huge mistake. The motion picture had turned out to be a horror flick and Annabeth didn't sleep a wink. Now, she only had six hours left to brainstorm like crazy. Totally doable, if not for the fact that she had been awake for thirty-six hours and run out of coffee.

The situation was very bad indeed. Without coffee, she wouldn't be able to function. She wouldn't be able to live!

Okay, she would, but she would be about as useful as the wire frame of an umbrella in the middle of a rainstorm after her boss and professor got through with her. They were both very strict. Annabeth couldn't let her perfect grade slip. Her famous architect mother, Athena, would disapprove of her and possibly cut off her funding for college. If her mother did that, Annabeth would have to mortgage her classic set of encyclopedias and that was _not_ going to happen.

It was for all the above reasons that she found herself waiting in line at Chiron's Cup for a cup of varnish remover, which was a weird synonym Annabeth had discovered for coffee.

 _Could coffee actually remove varnish?_

"Focus, Annabeth," she told herself, tapping her foot. On another day, she would have loved to lounge around the shop with her laptop and take the time to try out the tantalizing blueberry muffins that could simulate Elysium offered on the pastry shelves. They looked like the perfect blend of sweetness, but she couldn't spare the precious time to sit down and eat one. Instead, she stood in line, waiting for her turn to order.

 _Of course,_ the line had to be long on the day she was there with an impending deadline. She twisted her blonde hair in between her fingers and hoped the barista would feel the glare of her stormy grey eyes and speed up the process.

Annabeth counted three more people ahead of her. Sighing, she took out her phone and began reviewing the angles of the quadrilaterals in the project she was working on. The device was slow, rudimentary, and not nearly the right size to properly work on, but it would have to do.

"Are you ordering, Ma'am?" a voice suddenly asked her.

"Huh?" Annabeth looked up from her phone, eyes aching from lack of sleep and staring at an electronic screen far too long.

"Are you ordering?" A scraggly teen with a matching goatee was nervously standing by the counter, awaiting her decision. Was he chewing on a napkin?

"No! I'm just standing in line for no reason!" Annabeth sassed. "Yes, I'm ordering!" She wasn't very nice, and on the inside she knew it, but she was running on _zero_ hours of sleep!

"R-right," the barista, whose name tag read "Grover. FOOD!", stuttered. "What are you o-ordering?"

Annabeth would have liked to pick something out special, but reading the fancy print on the menu board with blurred vision was too much of a hassle."Double-shot espresso with a liberal amount of whipped cream," Annabeth dictated, hoping something like that was actually up there. "To go."

"O-one double-shot espresso with a l-liberal amount of w-whipped c-cream," Grover repeated, turning around to get her order. He kept glancing over his shoulder nervously, as if she was going to charge at him at any second. Honestly! Was she a cyclops or something?

She tapped her foot, aware of each passing minute she wasn't working on _something._ How slow could Grover go?

Grover _finally_ turned around, with a to-go coffee cup in his hand. "That'll be three dollars and eighty-six cents, Ma'am."

Astrid stared at the order. "I asked for whipped cream!" she whined, sounding like a total brat, but she didn't care.

"Oh. R-right!" Grover quickly grabbed the whipped cream bottle and added it to the espresso before offering it to her again. "Three dollars and eighty-six cents."

Annabeth dug around in her wallet and threw what she hoped (she still couldn't see very well) was four dollars down on the counter. "Keep the change."

"T-thanks. Visit Chiron's Cup again sometime soon!" He sounded less than thrilled at the prospect of an impending visit from her.

"Yeah, sure." She rubbed her eyes and took the cup and the receipt for her purchase. She was beginning to see double; that was not a good sign at all.

She should have stopped before trying to drink anything. Walking and drinking didn't mix. But she tilted her head back and let the scalding drink pour down her throat as she walked out the door.

She immediately smacked into someone, sending her coffee down the front of her favorite cream-colored sweater. The drink dripped down off of it onto her jeans, leaving a stain.

"Hey!" she and the person she had crashed into cried simultaneously.

" _Do you have a seaweed brain?_ " Annabeth snapped, staring at her ruined clothes. "Would you watch where you're going, or do you _try_ to hospitalize people? I should get your name and report you for assault!"

"You were the one who wasn't looking, Wise Girl!" the other person snapped right back at her.

Annabeth looked up and her eyes met aquamarine ones that made her blink for a second. They were perfect images of the ocean. "You're the one who barged in here!" she finally managed to say. The lack of sleep must have been getting to her head.

"Oh, really," the boy drawled, crossing his tanned arms. "How would you know if you weren't looking?"

Annabeth's mouth moved up and down, but words didn't come out. The boy smirked, irritating Annabeth.

"You ruined my clothes!" Annabeth accused, suddenly remembering that her front was now sopping wet.

"Well, at least I look good in coffee stains!" His lips pursed, and Annabeth became aware that his clothes were also covered in her espresso. "It's just coffee. No reason to get so hostile."

"But..." Annabeth resisted crying and pinched the bridge of her nose. Everything was going wrong, and the clock was counting down the hours until everything was due. Getting a shower and changing clothes would take forever, precious time she didn't have to waste.

The boy sighed, running a hand through his raven-black hair. "I'll buy you a new cup. How's that?"

"Fine." Annabeth started feeling a bit guilty when he checked his wallet and frowned. He was being somewhatnice, and she had just blown a fuse at him.

He jogged over to the front counter. He and Grover fist bumped. After the two exchanged words and shared a glance at her, Grover nodded and got to work. A few minutes later, the boy came back with a fresh cup of coffee (with double the whipped cream as before) and a bunch of paper towels for Annabeth.

"Thanks." Annabeth took them both, even though the paper towels were probably a lost cause at this point. She scrapped her shoe along the tile of the floor, feeling a tad ashamed. "Sorry for being so crabby. It's just that I've got an assignment due in a couple hours and..." she trailed off.

He grinned at her. "No problemo. I deal with crabby people all the time at the aquarium where I work. You'd be surprised at how many people fall in the shark tank."

"Come _on._ Fall in the shark tank?"Annabeth asked skeptically.

"Well, maybe the fountain outside," he corrected sheepishly.

"Eh. One of these days, I'll pay you back and buy you a cup."

"No, thanks! To do that, you'd have to spill coffee all over me again, Wise Girl. You've increased the value of my clothes enough."

"Whatever you say, Seaweed Brain," she called over her shoulder. She turned around only to trip over the threshold into the next patron walking in the door and lose her second cup.

 _A/N: Yes, yes, yes. Dozens have done the same fanfiction. I'm unoriginal. It was for a quick school assignment. NaNoWriMo is sucking up my time like a vacuum cleaner. Any fellow panickers?_

 _Read, dislike my copycat-ness, and review._

 _Rider_


End file.
